LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) — Raquel Welch, an actor and model who helped to revolutionize women’s roles in film, died at her home in Los Angeles on Wednesday. She was 82.
According to the New York Times, her death was confirmed by her son, Damon Welch, but no cause of death was provided.
Born as Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago in 1940, Welch attended San Diego State College on a theater arts scholarship with dreams of pursuing a career in acting. She took the name Welch from her high school sweetheart, James Welch, who she married in 1959 but divorced several years later. She continued to use the name Welch after her divorce in order to avoid being typecast for Latino roles.
After some roles in local theater, Welch landed a gig as a television weather presenter at San Diego’s KFMB before relocating to Dallas in the wake of her divorce, where she survived as a cocktail waitress and model for Neimann Marcus.
After signing with agent Patrick Curtis in 1964, Welch secured small roles in several films before her big breakthrough in 1966 when she was cast in the Hammer Studios film One Million Years B.C.
While her role in the film included only three lines of dialogue, promotional images of Welch in a doeskin bikini became a sensation, ensuring her place as one of the decade’s leading sex symbols and sparking a fashion trend.
Other roles for Welch included the spy thriller Fathom (1967), the Peter Cook–Dudley Moore Faustian comedy, Bedazzled (1967), and the 1969 action film, 100 Rifles, where she played a freedom fighter.
She was also cast opposite Frank Sinatra in The Lady In Concrete, and as a transexual woman in the 1970 film Myra Breckinridge, which received an X rating for its, at the time, controversial content.
In 1980, she was lauded for her turn in a leading role in the Broadway production Woman of the Year, but her acting career was derailed two years later after she was fired from a cinematic adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Producers on the show alleged that she failed to meet the terms of her contract by refusing to show up for morning rehearsals. She took MGM Studios to court and eventually won a $10.8 million verdict but was effectively blackballed in the industry.
Despite her legal issues, she still found acting work, appearing in small roles in films such as Legally Blonde, Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult, and the PBS television series “American Family.”
In addition to her career as an actor, Welch also successfully parleyed her fame into a fitness and beauty entrepreneur, starting in 1984 with the release of The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program book and videos. She also launched a signature line of wigs and hair prosthetics and served as a spokeswoman for MAC Cosmetics.
